Heaven's Footsoldiers Escape the Dog Patch Hung Over in the End Times By JOE BAGEANT
Since George Bush's reelection, the Christian nutjobs have mounted an assault on my block. In the five years I've lived in this neighborhood I've never had so much as one Jehovah's Witness knock at the door. But last Saturday morning my neighbor Tinka-the-wool-weaver called to warn of approaching Bible thumpers working the doorbells on my side of the street. Sure enough, out the window were two women in long skirts with bad Bible hairdos headed my way. "Incoming Jesus freaks at nine o'clock high!" I yelled to my wife. We jumped back into bed and let'em pound on the door and drop tracts in the mailbox while Barb read the Washington Post and I caught anther 20 zees. That, we thought, was the end the end of it. But next day while walking my dog Bingo---a black pisshound of dubious origin---a white van cruised alongside us slowly, as if confused about directions. I asked if I could help, and BAM! I should have know better. It was evangelist sucker bait. The Christian church logo on the driver's baseball cap (any time you see a cross, flames and a sword in a logo, run) told me I'd stepped into a fundamentalist ambush. The driver had one of those delirious smiles only a fundie can muster, and that glint of mad zeal that gives one the heebie jeebies. I yanked Bingo away from a good piss and we wheeled off. "Jesus wants you to have a nice day," I heard over my shoulder, thinking to myself, "Then why inna hell don't you make like Jesus and let me have one." Somehow I suspect we've not seen the last of these god-crazed bastards and that Bingo and I will have to start taking our walks in the alleys instead of the streets. And maybe move the weekend cocktail hour up to 3 PM just to spite the fundies.
As the elections proved for once and for all, Christian fanatics are plenty thick in the good ole U S of A these days and can no longer be written off as Dogpatch religionists. Historically, they have always been around and in about the same numbers too, just less visible. But currently they are hopped up about god giving them their own president and even their own political party. Of course in a country limited to two parties---the Republican Party of Heavy Imperialism and Democratic Imperialism Lite---this spells trouble for those of us who do not handle snakes or wash other people's feet during church services. It is one thing for them to have it in for their enemies, and quite another to have their own president, cabinet, Supreme Court, and newly established Department of Fatherland Surveillance backing them up. Not since the days of Andrew Jackson's populist hog and hominy presidency have these people seen one of their own farting at the Oval Room desk. And as usual, the fundies have blood in their eye, this time for liberal humanism, free thought, Trojan rubber products and the number 666.
Given the near-fascist nature of U.S. governmental behavior lately, I do not think it is overstating the case to observe that we liberals seem to have become, at least to some degree, the new Jews of the rising Republican Reich. You remember the old German theme about a certain kind of people being responsible for everything wrong with an otherwise perfect white Christian society. It took a Republican mind to figure out that "elite" liberals constituted exactly such a threat to our national way of life. Remember that the German public saw the Jews as being against its "values" too, and that they had declared cultural and legal war on the Jews long before Hitler came along to galvanize the most nationalistic elements among the German people. Just as the Jews were used in Nazi Germany to rally Christian Germans, American liberals were used in the last election by the ultra-right to rouse Fundamentalist Christians---people who were previously uninterested in the GOP political agenda but got quite excited when it was pointed out to them that their anti-Christ was, lo and beshit! right among them. A godless homo-loving stem cell sucking liberal elite right here in Riverdale! The fact that we are at least one half of the population prevents us from being an "elite" somehow escaped everyone in the excitement.
In Germany it came down to jealousy of the Jews' success in capitalist society by a group of Christian white people who believed they had been excluded. In America it came down to supposedly being culturally excluded by the liberal elite, plus the voting rights of fetuses and allowing gay people to wear wedding rings. We can safely assume the fetuses don't really care one way or another. The gays are still pissed. In both cases however, the German and the American, Christianity is a form of political ideology masquerading as religious faith, deploying the ultimate force of government to root out the "evil" and dominate with its own particular delusion.
Meanwhile, it's hard to tell who is controlling whom. Do the Christian Fundamentalists in this country now have significant control of the Republican Party? Or were they simply duped into backing the latest U.S. capitalist imperialist grab for empire and exploitation of ordinary working Americans. My guess is that the big Republican capitalists do not give a fuck, so long as they can grab the money and run when the lights are shot out, and that the Christians don't care as long as they get a shot at swapping the Constitution with the Bible.
On one hand the Republicans want to own the world. On the other the godwacks want to dominate it, or destroy it if they can't: "Ya bow to my god buddy, or we blow this whole pop stand off the maptake everybody outstartin with the Middle East." As near as I can tell, fundamentalists in every religion have this in common---destroying the world to bring on their brand of paradise. The majority of Americans disagree with Christian or Jewish fundamentalist ideas, but there is no way to call the fundies on it because their agenda is couched in religious language and symbols. And we all know for crap sake that America stands for religious freedom. Even fruitcake religious freedom. So we do not challenge the Christian or right wing Zionist freaks among us (It's open season on Muslims however.) We few who do challenge religion are declared satanic secular humanists, anti-Semitic or anti-Islamic. All of which works well for only one group---the rightwing political crazies who, in their quest for oil, capital, territory, or whatever, use god rhetoric to drive these zealots like a pack of blind slobbering dogs. This story is so old that it is sometimes hard to have much faith in the human race at all, isn't it?
The Sacred Screwjob
It was recently pointed out to me by a psychotherapist that each of the three major Middle Eastern Bronze Age religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, has a screwjob that is central to its narrative---a messiah, or prophet who got the schnickle while here on earth.
continued, and well worth it: http://www.counterpunch.org/bageant11112004.html
Joe Bageant is a magazine editor and essayist living in Winchester, Virginia. He can be reached at bageantjb at netscape.net. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20041112/423d4f6c/attachment.htm>